House of Commons Hansard Debates for 19 Mar 1990

Mr. Heath : If I interpret him aright, I think that my hon. Friend is endeavouring to be complimentary. I agree that when one is young one looks to the future, but with age and experience one can learn from the past in looking to the future. I agree that we should do that.

It is said that we must teach people not to carry out war crimes. At Nuremberg, we carried that through and

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defeated the people in war who had carried out the war crimes. That has not stopped the orgy of war crimes that has occurred since. It has not stopped them in south-east Asia or anywhere else. When people are in such positions of power and are determined to extend their power, they descend to committing war crimes and do not look to history. We have been unable to influence that or to do anything about it afterwards.

I shall consider the major point of the proposals of my right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary : this is retroactive legislation. If it were not, it would not be required. I am not happy about all the other points that he made. He has disowned two of the proposals put forward in the Hetherington report. Let us remember that the report did not take account of the wider issues of which the House should take account, but dealt specifically with legal points, and understandably so. Many of the points about which we have learned today have related to legal matters.

I am not happy about evidence being given on videos or television in a foreign language with the defendant being unable to be on the spot, with his counsel examining him and defending him. Perhaps we have to accept that as part of our normal legal process, but it does not appeal to me as a means of ensuring justice.

The basic point is that this is retroactive legislation, and this situation does not justify it. I am astonished that some of my right hon. and hon. Friends support the idea so readily. I remember a Labour Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1950-51 trying to backdate a measure by a fortnight. There were riots among my party ; Members said that such an act was intolerable. Now we are trying to backdate legislation by 50 years, and I cannot believe for a moment that that is justified. We will not be tarnished by the allegation that we have done nothing about war crimes ; we shall be tarnished by the idea that we can change our legislation 50 years later, so that anyone who comes to this country and enjoys its privileges will be liable to be affected by retroactive legislation going back 50 years. That is the crucial point--

Mr. Rupert Allason (Torbay) : Does my right hon. Friend appreciate that a loophole in the law discriminates against people who were born in this country? If they were born in this country and were British passport holders when they committed a crime overseas, they could be prosecuted at any time ; retroactive legislation is not needed for them. All this proposal intends to do is to put foreigners who came to this country after they committed their crimes on the same footing as British subjects who were born here.

Mr. Heath : I realise that, but this retroactive legislation is in no way justified by the reason that my hon. Friend gives. It is proposed, for instance, that large numbers of people should come here from Hong Kong. Many have come from Uganda and from other countries. All of them could be affected by retroactive legislation passed in this Parliament, in a way of which they were unaware when they came here. They can be made liable to prosecution by any future Parliament or Government--

Mr. Rooker : The right hon. Gentleman mentioned Uganda. Ugandan citizens who came to this country in recent years and who are alleged to have been responsible

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for committing war crimes are already covered by the 1957 legislation. There is no question of bringing in new legislation to cover them.

Mr. Heath : The point that I am trying to make is that, once we legislate retroactively in one sphere, there is no guarantee that a future Government, backed by a large majority, will not do so in another. That is the crucial point which it is so difficult to bring home to the House. We have never tolerated retroactive legislation in any sphere ; we have always fought it. If we give way in this sphere which arouses so much passion and emotion, everyone will realise that the British Parliament is prepared to pass retrospective legislation in others.

That is the main reason why I am still strongly opposed to the Bill, but I want to touch on its consequences. Four people were specified in the report and it is now said that one of them is dead. What chance of a fair trial have the other three, given that the committee has already said that there is a good chance of convicting them? Is this how we want our judicial system to be handled?

We have heard today about the special body that is to be set up to investigate the other cases. That cannot be kept quiet. As soon as investigations start, the press will know about them and the gutter press will run the story on the front pages--and everywhere else. In the past 10 years, the police have developed one of the best public relations systems in the country. No incident at 4 or 5 o'clock in the morning, or on the tube going home, is not immediately reported on television and radio and in the press. That is what will happen to these people.

We have heard today also about some people's remarkable memories. Some people do indeed have them, but those of us who deal with other memories know how fallible they are, particularly those of people who write memoirs. I cannot accept the idealistic tone of some of the comments that we have heard about the perfect retention that some people may have in these trials --some may, but most do not. These will be show trials. Many people will rejoice about that. The hon. and learned Member for Montgomery spoke most movingly about his friends not wanting heavy punishment or retribution, let alone revenge. They may not want that, but the people who will follow these trials in the gutter press will want it, and that will be immensely damaging to this country. Demands for revenge appeal to the lowest instincts in people--

Mr. Waddington : I wonder whether my right hon. Friend realises that the retrospective legislation to which he takes such exception seems to be expressly allowed for in article 7 of the European convention on human rights, to which we acceded in 1950. The convention specifically states :

"No one should be held guilty of any criminal offence on account of any act or omission which did not constitute a criminal offence under national or international law at the time when it was committed." But article 7.2 goes on to say explicitly :

"This Article shall not prejudice the trial and punishment of any person for any act or omission which at the time when it was committed, was criminal according to the general principles of law recognised by civilised nations."

The whole argument advanced by Hetherington is that it is incontrovertible that, if these people committed the crimes alleged against them, they must have known that what they doing was criminal and must certainly have known that what they were doing was criminal according

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to the general principles of law recognised by civilised nations. Was the European convention right or wrong to allow for the very retrospective legislation to which my right hon. Friend objects so strongly?

Mr. Heath : I am objecting to the fact that it is not part of our judicial process or system, and the Home Secretary cannot deny that. If it were part of it, we should not be here debating the Bill. The Home Secretary is trying to introduce the idea to our judicial and legislative systems. Whether these people must have known is a side issue of no consequence. Many of them were brought here by British authorities and could not have known our system of law, let alone foreseen the 1957 Act--

Mr. Waddington : I know that my right hon. Friend is not trying to mislead the House, but he misunderstands what I am saying. I am not arguing that those people knew when they came here that they might be subject to British jurisdiction. I am saying that they knew perfectly well that they were commiting crimes under the laws of every civilised nation.

Mr. Heath : Even that is debatable--[ Hon. Members :-- "Come on."] I am sorry, but we come here to the perennial argument about people who receive orders, a position in which I found myself during the war, as did many of my colleagues and friends. When they believed that they were given orders which they subsequently carried out, they could say that they were not aware that they were breaking the laws of any civilised legal system.

If the Government press on with this Bill, they will be gravely mistaken. I do not envy the position of the Attorney-General when he comes to deal with individual cases under the Bill. Once the process starts, the public will quickly revert to the position of 1948. When the people concerned become known and inquiries are made, the Attorney-General will be pressed by people asking him why he has not brought any action. He will have to say that he does not believe that action is justifiable--if that is his view-- in a given case. Then we shall hear exactly the same passionate remarks about what happened leading up to and during the second world war. I do not envy him his position for one moment.

The right action for us to take would have been to adhere to the 1948 decisions. We should have said that we had taken our action, it was known worldwide and it was effective. The Jewish people will never allow what happened to be forgotten for a moment, so that is not a concern of the House either. Our concern is how the people of this country will be affected once this process starts. It will be infinitely damaging, and at a time when eastern Europe and the rest of Europe are looking to the future, we shall find ourselves going back into the past.

6.21 pm

Mr. Peter Archer (Warley, West) : The right hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Mr. Heath) is, of course, always listened to in the House with great respect, but I was a little puzzled when he said that he was troubled by the passion of some of the contributions made to the debate. I would be more troubled if we could discuss these events and remain totally clinical and unmoved.

The case for the Bill is simple and can be stated totally without passion. Certain people, most of whom are United Kingdom citizens and all of whom have been residing among us for a long time, are alleged to have committed

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terrible crimes. The Bill makes provision for the evidence against them to be properly investigated by a court of law, as would be the case if you, Mr. Speaker, or I were subject to the same allegations. That is the case for the Bill.

There is no need to discuss the various justifications for the criminal law. I am reluctant to embark on a discussion about the reason why the criminal law should be enforced in this case. Of course it should be enforced, and it is for those who oppose the Bill to establish why that should not be done. The debate centres on their objections.

As I understand them, they have four objections. First, it is said that the Bill is selective, that it does not deal with all the enormities that human beings have committed and does not include the enormities committed outside German-occupied territories before 1957. I have some sympathy with that objection, which at least troubled my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Sparkbrook (Mr. Hattersley).

I have been arguing for many years for an international criminal law which is enforced in international courts. That is not my invention. It was being discussed in the United Nations in 1947, and at that time people thought that it was about to come into existence. But I pay tribute to the Home Secretary for the speed with which he responded to a widespread and deeply felt call for action, and I can understand why he did not embark on so wide a principle. He is seeking to deal not with a potential problem but with one that is with us here and now. If he had sought to legislate more widely, he might have been criticised. It is a harsh fate for him to be criticised because he is less ambitious in the Bill, although I would have welcomed wider legislation.

The second objection advanced is that all this happened a long time ago and that events so long ago are better forgotten. That was one of the objections of the right hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup.

Mr. Heath : Not for a moment would I say that they should be forgotten. I said that they will never be forgotten. I said that we should not now embark on this path of legislation and everything that flows from it.

Mr. Archer : I am sorry if I misrepresented the right hon. Gentleman. He seems to be saying that they should not be forgotten but that, having remembered them, we should not act in accordance with them. I accept the distinction, but I am not persuaded by it. It would be a strange doctrine to say that someone who committed a crime and who remained undetected for a long time should not only enjoy the freedom and prosperity to which he had not been entitled during that time, but should have the whole slate wiped clean. It would be like saying that if, after some years, the people who perpetrated the outrage at the Royal Marines base in Deal were discovered, we should declare, "It is all a long time ago ; let us forget about it." Those who are closest to the events would certainly find some difficulty in understanding that doctrine.

The third objection, as I understand it, is that the law is being changed retrospectively. That was the burden of the argument advanced by the right hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup. It has been suggested that a lawyer is better qualified to pronounce upon these matters than someone who has not had a legal training. I do not agree

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with that at all, and to that extent I go along with the right hon. Gentleman. The objection to retrospection is that it can be unfair. If it is not unfair, there is no objection to it, and lawyers have no monopoly in deciding what is and what is not unfair. Of course it would be unfair of us to allow someone to do something that appeared to be acceptable and innocuous at the time and then afterwards to say, "We have changed our minds. What he has done will now be made punishable."

That would be unfair, but who will argue that the actions which we are discussing appeared at the time to be acceptable and innocuous? It is not even true to say that the people we are discussing thought that they were acting on orders. They entered enthusiastically on a course of action which they were in a position to implement. They were wicked to a spine-chilling degree and must have known that their crimes were wicked. They were unlawful under the legal system of every civilised country, including the countries where they took place. They were unlawful under international law and contrary to the military manuals in use by the German army at the time. No one is inventing a new crime, the punishment for which would be retrospective.

Of course, without this legislation, the courts of England and Scotland would not have jurisdiction to try these people, even though they are United Kingdom citizens and have been residing among us for a long time. The alternative to the legislation would be to extradite them to the countries where these events took place. But I have not heard them or any objector to the Bill arguing for that solution. It is being said, not that it is unfair for them to be tried in the United Kingdom rather than somewhere else, but that we should wash our hands of the whole matter. That is not an objection based on retrospection ; it is an invitation to walk away from the whole thing.

The Attorney-General (Sir Patrick Mayhew) : Does the right hon. and learned Gentleman agree that the key to the retrospection issue is to be found in the long title to the Bill, which says that the Bill's purpose is to confer jurisdiction on United Kindom courts in respect of certain crimes? It does not seek to impose criminal penalties for certain conduct which has not hitherto attracted them. Moreover, it would confer jurisdiction not immediately or retrospectively but in the future, at such time as the Bill takes effect. In other words, it gives substantial notice.

Mr. Archer : I am grateful to the right hon. and learned Gentleman for his intervention, and I wholly agree with him. The burden of my submission is that no one in his right mind would suggest that this was unfair, and unfairness is the basis of any objection to retrospection.

The fourth objection is based on the alleged reasons why the accused people cannot be given a fair trial. The right hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup suggests that, because the

Hetherington-Chalmers report mentioned three specific people and said that there was reason, as its authors understood it, for implementing prosecutions in those cases, those people could not be given a fair trial. In every criminal case the prosecuting authorities say that, in their view, there is good reason to implement a prosecution. The right hon. Gentleman's argument proves too much because it entails that we should abolish the whole of our criminal law system. If I thought that the

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people about whom we are talking could not be given a fair trial, I would be among those opposing the Bill, and I hope that no hon. Member would doubt that.

Mr. Gorst : Is it not the case that, if anyone living in this country has a guilty conscience about what he has done, there is nothing to prevent him, between now and the Bill being passed, from extraditing himself to wherever he might be better off?

Mr. Archer : I could not have put it better ; I agree with the hon. Gentleman. I am a little troubled that some of them may extradite themselves but not necessarily to countries where there is jurisdiction to try them. That would have been a sensible way to deal with it in the absence of the Bill. They should be sent back to where they can be tried.

Mr. Allason : Is it not pretty unlikely that people will extradite themselves, as the only other country left in the civilised world where these individuals can go to obtain safe haven is Syria?

Mr. Archer : I could not improve on the hon. Gentleman's intervention. I fear that that is true.

I have had a little experience in our criminal courts, both as a recorder and as a magistrate. I do not think so ill of our criminal courts and our jurors as to believe that there cannot be, or will not be, a fair trial in such cases. No system can guarantee that there will never be a miscarriage of justice--there have been some in recent times--but that was where the court was deliberately misled by someone falsifying the evidence. There is no reason to think that that will happen in this case. The conclusion of that argument is that, as no legal system can guarantee that it is proof against any deception, no one should be tried for anything.

Only two specific reasons are suggested as to why the fairness of these trials should be in question. The first is that the potential defendants are old. That will be a consideration for the prosecuting authorities to take into account. If someone is too ill or too old to understand the nature of the offences charged against him and to give proper instructions for his defence, then the trial will not, and should not, proceed. The prosecuting authorities are there specifically to direct their minds to just such questions, and the purpose of the Bill is to empower them to consider such questions. In the absence of the Bill, no one will have power to consider them. This point is equally true of witnesses. If it transpires that no witness is capable of giving evidence, so no evidence is available, then, unhappy though it may be, the accused person will go free because the prosecution will not be capable of being proceeded with. But we should not be too patronising about this. I know many people in their early or mid-70s who would be outraged if one suggested that, because of their age, they were incapable of understanding what is alleged against them or of explaining what they have to say about it. These matters must be considered in each and every case.

The second reason for anxiety about a fair trial in these cases is that Sir Thomas Hetherington and Mr. Chalmers made suggestions to facilitate the taking of evidence abroad. In the last debate on this subject, my right hon. Friend the Member for Sparkbrook expressed disquiet about changing the law of evidence for one category of case. That principle does not shock me. It has been done

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for a number of categories of case--for example, for fraud cases. The two proposals in the Hetherington-Chalmers report seem eminently sensible for all criminal proceedings--not to facilitate a prosecution, but to get at the facts, and that may operate in favour of the defence.

But that is now academic. Those two proposals are not in the Bill. Whether they should be introduced in respect of all criminal proceedings or of criminal proceedings in Scotland is something that we may debate at some other time. The only proposal in the Bill is a procedural proposal to avoid the necessity of elderly people making two long journeys instead of one and giving evidence twice instead of once. That could have been achieved by making use of the existing procedure of a voluntary bill.

I am glad that the Home Secretary has provided a procedure that will be much fairer to the defence than a voluntary bill. If that change were introduced right across the board, we would not have to complain so frequently about voluntary bills. This principle enables the judge to decide whether there is sufficient evidence to place the accused on trial. It is for the judge to consider whether the interests of justice require that a particular witness should give evidence orally, and should he decide that, then so be it. It is difficult to understand how that system can be thought to operate unfairly.

We need to take the greatest care to ensure that no injustice is done. We need to do that in very criminal trial, and as these are allegations of such vile and wicked crimes, it is particularly important that there should be a fair trial. But seeing that justice is done includes ensuring that the truth emerges, and that is not achieved by walking away from the problem. Sir Thomas Hetherington and Mr. Chalmers were not indifferent to the need for a fair trial. Some time ago, I was speaking to someone from another country--a distinguished lawyer--who said how fortunate we are to have two such individuals who could produce such a report and produce it so quickly.

The reputation of this country for justice will not be enhanced by shrugging our shoulders, or by displaying an absence of passion. If the Bill does not proceed, we shall be alone, as the hon. Member for Torbay (Mr. Allason) said, among countries where the problem has arisen, certainly outside south America and the middle east, in saying that we would be content to be a safe house for war criminals. We would be administering a deep hurt to those who, like the hon. and learned Member for Montgomery (Mr. Carlile), are either themselves among the victims or closely related to victims. And we would be false to justice itself.

6.36 pm

Sir John Wheeler (Westminster, North) : It is a great pleasure to follow the right hon. and learned Member for Warley, West (Mr. Archer), and I agree with all that he said. I found the speech of my right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary most persuasive and compelling, in his outline of what the issue is about. Her Majesty's Government had no alternative but to introduce the Bill in the light of what happened in December when, by 348 votes against 123, the House voted in favour of the principle of legislation.

The Bill sets out precisely and concisely what we intend to achieve. It says :

"The purpose of the Bill is to confer upon United Kingdom courts jurisdiction over offences of homicide committed as war crimes in Germany or German-occupied territory during the period of the Second World War."

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The effect of the Bill, should the House agree to it, is that the criminal law would apply to those persons now resident in the United Kingdom who were not British citizens at the time of the alleged offences.

Clause 1 is the substance of the issue. I do not intend to repeat many of the arguments, some of which are emotional and some of which are legal in their basis, in favour of the Bill. Those of us who have been here throughout the debate have heard them all. The Bill effects no great change in the criminal law of the United Kingdom. It effects merely one change-- the change that permits a case to be brought before the criminal courts of England and Wales and of Scotland against individuals who were not citizens of the United Kingdom at the material time of the commission of the crime alleged against them. To do nothing is not an option for the House. Three years ago, information came to our notice--it was not previously available in the public domain--which alleged that the most monstrous crimes had been committed. To say now that they took place 50 years ago and that they do not really matter is not an acceptable option for us.

I seek to answer those who have properly referred to the decision of 1948 not to continue with war crimes trials. We should hark back to the political climate of that time. We and our allies had serious doubt whether peace would continue to be maintained in Europe. It was in the interests of all to conclude the trials for political reasons--and not only for the reasons that Lord Shawcross has advanced to the press in recent times, valid though they were, no doubt, at the time.

The evidence that we have before us as a result of the publication of the Hetherington-Chalmers report is such that we now believe that we harbour in our country those against whom grave and serious allegations have been made. It behoves us to ensure that the criminal jurisdiction, through its normal process and procedures, should have the opportunity to consider the allegations, if that is the right course of action proposed by the Law Officers in their independence. It is for those reasons that I shall vote in favour of the Bill this evening.

6.41 pm

Mr. Merlyn Rees : I do not wish to misrepresent the right hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Mr. Heath), but I think that he said that many of those who are emotional about the matters raised by the Bill were not involved in the war. He said something like that, and told us that he had received letters about the issues which we are now debating. He talked also about those who acted under orders. I do not wish to overlard the point, but my father died in the first world war. No one in my family ever gloried in war. I was brought up in that tradition. I suggest that it is only a few who glory in war. It is with that background that I have always taken my children, when we have been on the continent, to see the Commonwealth war graves. I have told them that Germans and others who were our enemies lie in the same cemeteries.

For myself--I was in the middle east and Italy, not in France--I have had a look at north-east France. I was touched to see Chancellor Kohl and President Mitterrand holding hands on the battlefield. The French and the

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Germans killed more of each other over a period of years than most of the rest of us. I have visited the cemetaries at Caen. I stood with the right hon. Member for Lagan Valley (Mr. Molyneaux) at the anniversary of D-day at the beach where he went ashore in June 1944. A man came to see me last week who was not in very good shape. He had been on the Lancastria when 2,000 died at St. Nazaire, or in that area, when it was escaping from Dunkirk and taking the long route home. I have visited practically every Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemetery in Italy, where I happened to be.

I have asked myself--I was not there--about the 120,000 who died in Dresden. A war crime? There are those who say that it was not a war crime because it was done under orders. I have read the questioning that took place--I had ministerial responsibility for the Royal Air Force after the war--about whether the bombing of Germany did what it was intended to do.

The right hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup will know that the argument was advanced in defence circles in the 1960s that things would have been better if we had had a larger army. It was asserted that we would not have been so weak in Europe when the land battle was fought. I do not wish to be involved in that argument. The fact is that 55,000 of our young men--they were of my age group--lie dead in Europe. I think of them now, when all the talk is about Berlin. They were in groups of eight, and all that is left of them is the bit around their necks. They were set aflame above Berlin. The part that we played in the battle of Berlin is sometimes fogotten.

When a discussion takes place about war crimes, all old soldiers, airmen and sailors say almost instinctively to one another, if not overtly "We were all involved in that, and it was all a war crime." All war is a crime. The next war, which happily seems to be further away from us now, might be fought with nuclear weapons. When I had ministerial responsibility for the Air Force, it was much in my mind that we had aircraft equipped to deliver nuclear weapons that were targeted on Warsaw and Budapest, for example, just as their weapons were targeted on us.

We are not talking about war crimes in the sense in which the term is understood by many old soldiers, airmen and sailors. Everyone who has been involved in modern war knows in his heart of hearts that millions of people lie in north-east France and that the Russians lost 30 million dead in two world wars. We are not talking about that. Paragraph 1.12 of the Hetherington-Chalmers report says that we should consider the terms "war crime" and "war criminal". It states :

"Most of what are termed "war crimes" in the Second World War were committed far from the front line and have little to do with the actual waging of war."

We are not talking about normal methods of war under orders.

Mr. Amery : The right hon. Gentleman is right to say that there is a difference between what happens in the heat of battle and events at other times at other places. Some of us are anxious about the Bill's selectivity. Horrible things were done well behind the lines by the KGB, or whatever it was called in those days. The Bill deliberately does not cover those acts. Is it appropriate to be selective in the sense of having unfinished business with the anti-Nazi war crimes trials? Should we have a broader Bill, or no Bill at all?

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Mr. Rees : The report provides figures for the atrocities carried out by the Soviet forces in 1940-41 in the very area of eastern Europe that we have been talking about in terms of the Nazi war crimes. I see no difference between the actions of the Nazis and those of the Soviet forces. As I understand it, if anyone who participated in the Soviet war crimes is living in Britain, he will be subject to this proposed legislation.

Mr. Amery : I think not.

Mr. Rees : If such a person has come here, settled here and become a British citizen, he will be covered by the Bill. There is a technical consideration. The Bill refers to German-occupied territory. If there is a time factor, that should be put right in the Bill. If it was not German territory at the time--

Mr. Archer : Or German-occupied territory.

Mr. Rees : --we should consider the matter. As far as I am concerned, there is no difference between German territory and German- occupied territory.

The genocide that the Bill is designed to deal with is different from the war crimes against humanity in which so many of us have been involved over the years. That is the context in which the Bill has been drawn. It is not drawn in the context--one that many of us would consider to be nonsense--of the sort of war that we have managed to become involved in over the years in Europe, in which millions have been killed.

I am grateful to the Government for drawing up the legislation, and for listening during the debate--and in many cases after it--to our views on what should be in it. As I have gone round the country talking about this matter, I have repeatedly emphasised that, if I had committed such a crime, I could be brought before the courts, but if my next-door neighbour had come here and stayed, even if he had not become a British citizen, he would be exempt from being brought before the courts.

There is a responsibility in becoming a citizen. It has been said that people may want to leave the country ; although that point does not meet the major issue of the commission of crimes, it illustrates the observation made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Perry Barr (Mr. Rooker)--that the Bill is nationality or citizenship legislation, rather than war crimes legislation. The Bill does not create a new crime, but says that people who were not here at the time, but have come here to live, are subject to the law in the same way that the rest of us are.

I am glad that the Government have dealt only with committal proceedings in the second part of the Bill. If I had been Home Secretary, I would have thought carefully about the long title of the Bill, about making it a grandiose Bill and about widening it. If there is a case for the Scots to argue in their Committee about what they want to do with certain aspects of their law, it should be considered in the breadth of Scottish law and not in the narrowness of the Bill. I congratulate the Government on deciding to act in this way.

We decided to support the legislation in a take-note debate in December, and it is the legislation that we must consider. The House has decided on principle, and it has the chance to decide on principle again. However, the detail of the Bill is important : the various clauses, the police unit that will investigate the Bill and the way in

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which the courts will work. I do not want people to be found guilty, or indeed not guilty, if the procedures of the court do not stand up to British justice.

I have spoken to a number of lawyers in recent weeks, and I listened to the debate in another place, which tended to be legal in tone. The lawyers have told me that they do not wish to prostitute the British courts. Along with others, I have been involved with the case of the Guildford Four ; I wish that there had been the same concern about that case as is being projected on to these future cases. I do not like it.

I still involve myself in Irish affairs, and concerns are expressed to me about the courts. If those in another place consider the procedures of the courts, I hope that they do not consider them only in that context of the Bill ; there is a wider concern. It has been suggested to me that the handling of the case of the Guildford Four was not the fault of the courts but that of the police and the evidence that was presented. That is not the way that I have thought about the British courts, or the reasons why I ended detention in Northern Ireland and said that people had to go through the courts. A court is not just a place that sits to listen : it has to make value judgments about the nature of the evidence. I hope that that will be done in the few cases that will come forward under the Bill. I trust the courts, and I believe that the Government's amendments will make the handling of court cases that much better. I support the Bill in principle, as I did before. I think that the Government have set about dealing with war crimes, as defined in the legislation, in the right way.

6.55 pm

Mr. Nicholas Bennett (Pembroke) : It is with some trepidation that I follow the right hon. Member for Morley and Leeds, South (Mr. Rees), as I was born four years to the day after the surrender of the Germans in 1945, and have no memories of the last war.

There are two reasons why I wish to take part in the debate. First, for many years I taught that period of history to children in our schools, and also as a lecturer at a further education college. Secondly, I am concerned about what the Bill will do to the British legal system.

Last year, I visited Dachau concentration camp in southern Germany to see for myself the remains of that ghastly place. One can still see the watchtowers, the barbed wire and the killing camp in its entirety. I also visited Belsen, which was razed to the ground after the war. Belsen creates a far greater fear than Dachau, where some of the buildings are still standing. One enters Belsen and sees the mounds in the mist and among the trees. Standing in that killing field, one realises that it is the final resting place of hundreds of thousands of innocent people.

I went on to Nuremberg, where I visited the court and the court room where Goering and the other Nazi leaders were tried in 1946. I saw the place where justice was finally brought to the people who had meted out so much crime and inhumanity to their fellow man. Having said that, I nevertheless have grave concerns about the Bill. We are proposing to take before the British courts two or three aged men to be tried for crimes that took place 45 to 50 years ago. We are singling out specific individuals. The right hon. Member for Morely and Leeds, South asked whether the Bill applied only to the Germans, and

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to German-occupied territories. It does : if he reads the terms of reference of the Hetherington-Chalmers report, he will see that page 3 paragraph 1.12 says :

"Our terms of reference require us to consider murder, manslaughter and genocide committed in Germany or in territories occupied by German forces'."

That has been reproduced on the front of the Bill.

My first objection is that we know that similar crimes took place in Russian-occupied Poland, Latvia and Lithuania. We know that the same atrocities took place before the Germans came, while they were there and after they had left. Surely it is wrong for us to single out one period of time, under one occupation, for special mention in the Bill, when there must be people alive who have committed the same atrocities under another regime whose members will not be prosecuted.

Mr. Rees : I take the hon. Gentleman's point, but all the allegations relate to German-occupied territory. If, before the Committee stage, anyone can show that people living in Britain committed such crimes in the Soviet-occupied areas, after the Soviet-Nazi pact, I am sure that arrangements could be made to amend the legislation.

Mr. Bennett : I wish that that were true.

I take the points made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Mr. Heath) in this debate and that of 12 December : the research has not taken place. The manhunt has been selective, and has dealt only with certain crimes in certain places. My second objection is this. We cannot base our law on one inquiry on one set of incidents. If we are to bring forward a Bill to prosecute war criminals, it must be on the generality of war criminals and not on specific cases of specific individuals. I share the attitude of my right hon. Friend the Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup : we cannot allow the House to go down the road of retroactive legislation. That would be a dangerous precedent, which the House has always set itself against.

As a young Conservative just beginning my political career in 1964, I experienced the row about the Burmah Oil case. It was suggested that there should have been retrospective legislation. However grave the accusations may be, we cannot now bring in a law to deal with people who were not British citizens for actions that were not under British jurisdiction in a foreign country some 50 years ago, and make that the excuse for retrospective legislation.

I want to deal next with the question whether these people would get a fair trial. I intervened in the speech of my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State for the Home

Department--unfortunately, he was diverted by a second intervention--to ask what jury would be able to give a fair trial to an individual brought before it as a result of specific legislation. If Parliament has spent between £7 million and £9 million, and if 35 police officers have been specially employed, there must be something of an onus on the jury to find the defendant guilty. The whole weight of the British parliamentary system will have been brought down on him before trial. In these circumstances, it is not right to say that he will get the fair trial to which every defendant is entitled. There is also very grave doubt about the question of evidence--in particular, the documents that will be produced. We all know that, over the last 40 or 50 years,

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